


nobody can be uncheered with a balloon

by zombeesknees



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 18:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16959531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombeesknees/pseuds/zombeesknees
Summary: When nothing can cheer the Doctor up, it’s time to resort to drastic measures. | Written for Challenge 27 at then_theres_us on LJ many moons ago.





	nobody can be uncheered with a balloon

He had been in a funk for four and a half days.

Four days and eight hours, to be precise.

She was keeping track. Hard not to.

Because when the Doctor had a storm cloud hanging over him, she _knew_ it. She felt it, down to the marrow of her bones. 

And that feeling was hard to ignore. 

Impossible, actually. The Doctor had a way of taking up a lot of the space in her life. 

She tried to go through the normal routine (normalcy tended to lose meaning with the Doctor, in the TARDIS, but she thought she finally had a handle on what “normal” meant when you spent your life hopping from one planet to the next, gripping a hand that belonged to a man who wasn’t really a man who had lived nine lifetimes more than you ever could). 

She made tea. She did laundry. She caught one of those humming fluffy blue things they had picked up on Krish’chak admiring itself in the bathroom mirror and put it back into the vast cage-and-tunnel system the Doctor had built for them out of plastic tubing.

But, lingering in the back of her thoughts like a bad toothache, was that feeling of _not-rightness_ that clung to the Doctor leech-like; an invisible parasite that was sucking the manic energy from his smile and the bounce from his step. 

She tried to distract him with suggestions for their next adventure, but he simply waved his hand listlessly and said he needed to work on fixing the dryer. She brought back a dozen cupcakes with those edible ball bearings he loved so much, but he said he wasn’t hungry. She wore the dress that always lifted his spirits (among other things), and he barely gave her a second glance.

It was then that she knew drastic measures were needed. When the Doctor didn’t give her The Eyebrow while she was wearing that particular red dress, the situation was dire.

He’d been thinking too much—that was the problem. It usually was. The last trip had landed them in Scotland, not long after the birth of Mary, future Queen of Scots. They’d stopped at a festival, where brawny young men in colorful clan tartans had shown off their skills with the sword and axe and huge logs while the woman danced reels and sold pies. They were passing a boy with dark curls and bright eyes, and suddenly the Doctor had gotten that distant, distracted look.

“A good lad,” he’d said under his breath—to her, or to himself, she wasn’t sure. “You lot grow so quickly. Age so quickly. And in the blink of my eye, you’re gone.”

When they had returned to the TARDIS, cheeks still red from the brisk early spring wind that howled over the green hills, he’d disappeared into one of the many, many bedrooms that had the sad air of disuse and nostalgia. 

Four days and eight-and-a-half hours later, she called her mother.

“Hi, Mum. Yeah, I’m fine. Yeah, we’re still here. Listen, Mum, does Cousin Mo still work at that party favor store? She get a discount there? Uh-huh… She still got the same mobile? Okay, thanks. Uh-huh. I know. ‘Kay. Bye, Mum. Love you.”

Fifteen minutes later, after calling her cousin and working out the details, she called her ex-boyfriend.

“Hey, Mickey. Does your mate Paul still own that old movers’ truck?” 

 

\----

 

“Rose, I should get back to work on the cappuccino machine.”

“Neither of us drinks cappuccino.”

“That’s because the machine is broken.”

“I don’t care, Doctor. And no more excuses. You’re not going to spend another minute moping about the TARDIS in your jim-jams, tinkering with stuff that doesn’t need to be tinkered with. It’s high time the Lord of Time went back out into the world and stopped dwelling on the past.”

He made a face at her that was just short of including an amber-hued eye-roll, shrugged his narrow shoulders under his pinstriped suit jacket, shoved his hands into his pockets, and kept walking. 

She thrust her arm through the crook of his elbow and tugged him into a half-run. “C’mon, Doctor! It’s spring! The sun’s shinin’ and the sky’s blue and there’s no huge catastrophe screaming in our faces. We’re gonna get some chips and walk through the park and smile at each other.”

He smiled then. A small smile that was a flicker of his usual self. 

Five minutes later they were sitting at a small white table by the front window while they waited for their chips. 

“Are you expecting something?” he asked when Rose glanced down at her watch for the third time.

“Well,” she drawled, stalling, biting at her lip.

Something pale pink flashed out of the corner of his eye, then something orange. The Doctor turned sharply to look out the window. His eyes widened when he realized just what he was seeing. 

Balloons. 

Hundreds of them. Possibly a thousand. Of every shade of color from pastel to neon, large and small and in-between, some spinning in the wind and others bouncing along the sidewalks. He stood slowly, still staring, and pulled open the door.

Children and parents and old ladies on either side of the street were stepping out of shops, pausing on the sidewalks, smiling, laughing, reaching out to grab at the weightless spheres as they spiraled past, buoyed by the spring breeze. Cars had frozen as a single body while their drivers rolled down their windows and leaned out for a better look at the sudden rain of color.

And the Doctor and his companion stood in front of the chip shop, surrounded by a cloud of brightly-hued gaiety, caught up in the tangible sense of carefree childhood and happiness. 

“You had something to do with this, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said, a crooked, toothy grin on his face. 

“Maybe,” Rose smiled in return.

“Well, technically this is considered littering,” the Doctor said in his superior, authoritative manner, reaching out a long-fingered hand to bat away a red balloon that was dancing before him. “And you’re probably breaking a few laws, too.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she agreed amiably as they craned their heads and shielded their eyes, watching the wind whisk a bunch up into the impossibly blue sky. “But you know what, Doctor? I don’t see the harm in breaking a couple of laws. Not when there’s a chance to bring a little magic into a normal day. Don’t you agree?” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, knowing exactly how he’d be smiling, knowing that he approved. "Besides, we'll gather them all up in the TARDIS before they do any harm."

“You’re amazing, Rose Tyler,” he said. He reached out for her hand, wiggling his fingers. “C’mon. What do you say to a brisk run?”


End file.
